The road goes ever on and on.

Primary Menu

Reykjavik, Iceland

May is a oddly good time to visit Reykjavik, so long as you don’t mind cloudy days. Ted and I discovered how great it is to just miss the tourism season (from June to August). We had an entire tour bus to ourselves at one point!

Here I am standing near Reykjavik City Hall. Note the clouds and utter lack of people!

There are lots of locals in Reykjavik, of course. Icelanders are extremely friendly and kind — I have nothing but good things to say about their hospitality. On the first day we were there, a local stopped to chat with us right after we had gotten out of our rental car. He ended up leading us to a bakery about a mile away that has exquisite pastries. On another day, we talked to one Icelandic bartender for twohours. And a waitress and I bonded by talking about Eurovision.

And Reykjavik is so much fun to explore! There are all kinds of neat restaurants, pubs, and shops. Also, having grown up in Midwestern suburbia, where houses don’t vary very much, I was delighted to see all the different paint jobs and building styles. Just look at these buildings:

The view from a local coffeehouse

I loved the various colors of these buildings

The street near our Airbnb

This house delighted me for some reason

The city is quiet and easy to navigate. Whenever I needed to re-orient myself, I looked for Hallgrimskirkja (the cathedral), which lies uphill from most things in Reykjavik. It’s a great landmark.

Hallgrimskirkja

On a random note: former New Yorker that I am, I noticed that no one had air conditioners sticking out of their windows. Several windows were cracked open, however, leading me to believe that Icelanders just let the weather do the job for them. (Considering that the temperature hovered around 20°C the whole time we were there, that makes sense, yeah?)